Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws

From Islamic Empires to the Taliban

By Shemeem Burney Abbas

Publication Year: 2013

This pioneering study of the evolution of blasphemy laws from the early Islamic empires to the present-day Taliban uncovers the history and questionable motives behind Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and calls for a return to the prophet Muhammad’s peaceful vision of social justice.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Preface: The Ethnography of a Military State

I am a woman scholar of sufism who was charged with blasphemy
by state functionaries at a federal university in the capital of Islamabad in
1998 during the Nawaz Sharif government. This was six years after my return
with a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin.1 ...

1. Pakistan's Military State and Civil Society

The tragedy of the twin towers gave birth to this monograph.
Many lives were lost and loved ones disappeared before I ventured to write
accounts of what had been happening in the world outside the United
States for almost two decades. ...

2. Muhammad, the Messenger

The political history of islam and the Prophet Muhammad’s life
is central to any discussion of blasphemy laws in an Islamic state. An accounting
of the Prophet’s biography and the early history of Islam will illuminate
Muhammad’s position on blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, and heterodoxy, ...

3. Blasphemy Laws' Evolution

This chapter explores the claim that the Islamic state has historically
used blasphemy laws for political and social control. A brief background
of Islamic law after the Prophet’s death is given to throw light on
how the laws evolved. It is important to understand how the use of blasphemy
charges evolved ...

4. Colonial Origins, Ambiguities, and Execution of the Blasphemy Laws

This chapter will offer further examples that support the
claim that blasphemy laws put in place by some Islamic states as part of the
sharia are manipulated for political agendas. As detailed earlier, Pakistan’s
blasphemy laws under General Zia-ul-Haq emerged as a result of the geopolitics
of the region in the 1970s ...

5. Risky Knowledge, Perilous Times: Historyâs Martyr Mansur Hallaj

A conference paper that I presented at Duke University’s Center
for Human Rights in 2004 inspires this chapter. The conference theme
was “Beautiful Minds, Risky Times.” As such, this chapter addresses the
connection of the Pakistani state with its liberal intellectuals and freethinkers.1 ...

6. Blasphemy Cultures and Islamic Empires

The present chapter needs to be understood according to the
“Blasphemy Trajectories” chart in figure 6.1. The chart has three vertical
sections. On the left side in the chart is “Western Arab/Turkish Islam,”
which was largely Sunni with populations of Shia Islam that had Shia sympathies. ...

Conclusion. The Affiliates: Where To?

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are the outcome of three empires: the Islamic
empires that followed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the
British Empire in India (1857– 1947), and the CIA-led empire in Afghanistan
(1978 – 1989). These laws have nothing to do with the Prophet Muhammad
or the Quran or the Prophet’s sunna. ...

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